How Scenic Stays Achieved Real-Time Financial Visibility with Topkey

The Challenge: Manual Financial Operations Creating Delays and Revenue Leakage

Scenic Stays, a leading vacation rental management company along Florida’s Gulf Coast, has grown from 42 units in 2018 to nearly 500 in just five years - no small feat in an industry where financial clarity and operational control are often hard-won. 

At the center of that growth is Anne Bollinger, Scenic Stays CFO and partner, who brings decades of experience as a CPA and financial leader in the vacation rental industry. This expertise made her acutely aware of the common financial challenges that plague property management companies, particularly around financial operations, accounting, expense tracking, and owner billing.

Like many property management companies, Scenic Stays struggled with several key financial operations challenges. 

Delayed Expense Tracking and Coding

Before Topkey, expense management followed a frustratingly slow cycle. Employees would make purchases throughout the month, but the finance team couldn't see these transactions until receiving the monthly credit card statements. This created a multi-week lag between when expenses occurred and when they could be properly tracked.

"With other systems, you wait a month, get the statement, see nothing's coded, then you start asking the employees over and over, please code your transactions," explains Anne. "This is not unique to Scenic Stays. Everybody has this problem. Nobody likes to code credit receipts anywhere." 

Once statements arrived, the finance team would spend weeks chasing employees to identify transactions and submit receipts. This prolonged reconciliation process created immense inefficiency:

"We had to chase people down for a month... It would take us 30 days after the end of the month just to get people to respond and code those credit cards."

Limited Visibility for Operations Managers

The delayed expense coding had a cascading effect throughout the organization. Without timely expense data, operations managers couldn't effectively control costs or make informed decisions:

"We would have to wait until the end of the month to see a credit card charge and say, 'Oh, that's not right.' Or you get too busy and never end up looking at it."

This lack of visibility created a disconnect between spending decisions and financial oversight, making it difficult for managers to monitor expenses in real time.

Revenue Leakage from Unbilled Owner Expenses

Perhaps most significantly, the delayed expense tracking was causing Scenic Stays to miss opportunities to bill property owners for legitimate expenses. When team members purchased items for specific properties, the delay in coding these expenses often meant they were forgotten by the time financial statements were prepared:

"In the past, if people forgot to bill and then it’s been two months, we may never bill the owner.”

With each unbilled expense, Scenic Stays was absorbing costs that should have been charged to owners, directly impacting their bottom line:

"So we were losing money. If we'd never billed for it, we just ate that $15 cost... Instead of a revenue stream, it should be $15 plus a 10% markup... And instead we lost $15 because we never got it. That's really the big savings with Topkey."

Slow Financial Reporting

The cascading delays from late expense coding significantly impacted financial reporting timelines. Without complete transaction data, the finance team couldn't produce accurate financial statements until weeks after month-end. This hampered decision-making at all levels of the organization:

Implementing Topkey: A Purpose-Built Financial Solution for Vacation Rental Managers

Anne was initially skeptical about whether Topkey would truly address their needs. As a former CPA and seasoned CFO, Anne had seen her share of flashy demos that looked promising on the surface but fell apart under real operational needs.

She wasn’t just looking for a better tool, she needed a platform that could meet the demands of a 500-property operation, integrate with legacy accounting systems, support rigorous financial oversight, and recover revenue lost in the cracks of manual processes. Anne’s initial concern was one shared by many finance leaders: does this system actually solve the real, on-the-ground problems I face every day?

In her case, the biggest blocker was integration, she needed custom GL coding and QuickBooks Desktop support. Without those, Topkey would just become another layer of manual work. Over time, Anne saw the product evolve, not just in features, but in its ability to meet the practical accounting needs of a complex operation.

As Topkey continued developing the product, they addressed key requirements like:

1. Integration with QuickBooks Desktop
2. GL code mapping to match Scenic Stays' accounting structure
3. Transaction approval workflows
4. Customizable filters for transaction management

By June 2024, the Topkey product evolved to meet all of Anne’s complex requirements. Scenic Stays now uses Topkey's comprehensive financial operations platform for:

• Mobile expense management with automatic SMS notifications for all transactions
• Multi-level approval workflows enabling managers to review transactions
• QuickBooks Desktop integration for automated expense syncing
• Corporate cards for team members making purchases

After her initial skepticism, Anne realized that Topkey was built to meet the scrutiny of financial leaders—not just impress them in a demo.

The Results: Real-Time Financial Operations

Since implementing Topkey, Scenic Stays has transformed its financial operations from a sluggish, manual process to a streamlined, real-time system that delivers immediate visibility into expenses.

Immediate Expense Capture and Coding

The most immediate impact has been the dramatic acceleration of expense tracking. Instead of waiting weeks to identify transactions, employees now receive immediate notifications after purchases:

"The employee who's making the charge has the ability within a minute of making the charge to code it, categorize it, and identify it. It's on their phone, it pops up immediately, they can code it, and take a picture of the receipt. So the receipt gets captured, not lost, and it gets coded."

This real-time capture eliminates the previously frustrating process of chasing employees for expense information weeks after the fact.

Custom GL Coding and QuickBooks Desktop Integration

When Anne first evaluated Topkey, one major concern was mapping expenses to specific GL accounts in QuickBooks Desktop. Generic category tagging like "office supplies" or "maintenance" simply wouldn’t cut it for a company responsible for accurate owner statements, financial audits, and internal reporting.

“I needed it to be our GL codes. Otherwise, I still have to pay someone to code everything just like I’m doing now.”

For Anne, it wasn’t just about expense tracking, it was about ensuring downstream accuracy across every financial process:

• Audit readiness: Clean, account-level categorization removes the risk of mismatched or unlabeled transactions.
• Reporting consistency: Financial reports that tie directly to the chart of accounts reduce rework and review cycles.
• ERP reconciliation: Accurate GL mapping makes syncing with systems like QuickBooks Desktop smoother and less error-prone.

This level of accounting fidelity is rarely found in off-the-shelf financial tools, and it’s why Anne didn’t move forward until the Topkey team added it.

Today, Topkey syncs directly with Scenic Stays’ QuickBooks Desktop environment, complete with mapped GL codes and automated classification, saving her team from hours of post-processing and making financials audit-ready from the start.

Enhanced Manager Visibility and Control

“Financials are always historic…so you need it as quickly as possible if you're going to make any realistic changes or adjustments or any kind of planning.”

With Topkey, operations managers now have immediate visibility into team expenses, empowering them to make timely decisions about spending. Before Topkey, Scenic Stays struggled to deliver preliminary financials to leadership in a timely manner. The finance team was stuck waiting on credit card receipts and manually reconciling transactions weeks after the month ended, leaving senior decision-makers in the dark.

“We couldn’t give them preliminaries before… at least not complete ones. None of the credit card charges would have been on there because we were still waiting.”

This delay meant leadership lacked a clear view of the company’s financial position during critical planning windows. Without up-to-date numbers, it was difficult to adjust to new circumstances, spot spending issues, or capitalize on emerging trends.

"The next part that is operationally vital is that the manager sees that and is able to verify that it was a legitimate business expense. They can react in much quicker time because they have access immediately."

With Topkey in place, preliminary financials are now available within 1–2 days of month-end, giving senior managers early access to accurate data, even before every last transaction is finalized.

This shift has been transformative. Instead of flying blind for weeks, Scenic Stays’ leadership can now make more agile, data-informed decisions turning financial reporting from a reactive task into a real-time strategic advantage.

"It puts the access into the hands of the managers to be able to react in real time. And if they need to stop, cut back on cost or whatever, they've got all that information right there."

Financial Security and Oversight

Before Topkey, Scenic Stays faced more than operational challenges, they lacked the real-time oversight necessary to detect errors or misuse before it impacted the business.

Anne shared that while incidents were rare, the risk of accidental misuse of company cards was real:

“Occasionally an employee might use a company credit card for personal reasons, accidentally. Now, it catches it immediately because they have a text message and they can report it immediately to the supervisor.”

In fast-moving, decentralized environments like vacation rental operations, delayed transaction visibility can create a blind spot. Without timely insights, charges, whether innocent mistakes or potential misuse, might go unnoticed for weeks, complicating reconciliation or even leading to lost funds.

“If you did have a theft situation… it would certainly help you catch that very quickly.”

Topkey closes that gap. Every charge triggers an instant alert and requires categorization and review. This proactive, built-in accountability acts as a preventative control mechanism, empowering managers to flag irregularities within 24–48 hours instead of weeks later.

For CFOs, this level of real-time visibility isn’t just about speed, it’s about protecting the business from financial exposure and creating an environment where oversight is built into daily workflows, not tacked on after the fact.

Recovered Revenue Through Timely Owner Billing

Perhaps most significantly, Topkey has helped Scenic Stays ensure they're capturing all billable expenses for property owners. When maintenance staff purchase items for specific properties, those expenses are now immediately tagged and available for billing:

"Operations folks use their credit card for purchases for the units. They go out and they have to buy a toaster... If they bought it on April 18th, they can have it on their owner statement dated April 18th. They don't have to wait until they get financials at the end of May." 

This timely expense capture has eliminated the revenue leakage from missed billable expenses. While Anne describes the savings as significant. For a company with 480 properties, even small missed charges can add up to substantial amounts over time:

"You get a few of those for each property, and now you're talking about $50 per property missing."

Redeploying Team Time Toward Revenue, Not Reconciliation

A common misconception with automation tools is that their primary value lies in headcount reduction or time saved. But for Scenic Stays, the impact of Topkey wasn’t about shrinking the team, it was about amplifying her team’s effectiveness.

Anne explained that while the same number of people are involved in financial workflows, the focus of their work has completely shifted:

“What we've done is increased efficiency. We're focusing on the revenue time now.”

Rather than spending weeks chasing down receipts, deciphering charges, and manually coding expenses, her team is now using that reclaimed time to identify billable owner expenses faster, reconcile books sooner, and produce more accurate financial statements, all of which directly affect revenue and profitability.

This was critically important as it helped Scenic Stays find value from Topkey almost immediately, right as they went into their busy season. Instead of getting overwhelmed with reconciliation, admin work, and manual processes, Topkey to free up her team to focus on higher value work going into their busy season. 

This shift illustrates the difference between doing more with less and doing more with the same, but smarter. Topkey enables teams to move away from low-value administrative work and redirect effort toward high-impact financial activities like:

• Ensuring billbacks are captured and markup revenue isn't missed
• Accelerating monthly closes for earlier financial insights
• Supporting real-time planning and cost controls

For CFOs, this means Topkey isn’t a labor-saving tool, it’s a leverage tool. It frees up financial bandwidth to focus on driving outcomes, not just closing books.

The Topkey Difference: Responsive Partnership

Beyond the product capabilities, Anne repeatedly emphasizes the partnership experience with Topkey as a critical success factor:

"The customer service that we get is top notch, I love it. We can directly talk to someone at Topkey at any time, ask a question, get a response, and we feel very loved and appreciated there." 

Even after implementation, Scenic Stays continues to collaborate with Topkey on product refinements:

"We still meet with customer service every two weeks to tweak this or that and look at what the system can do and maybe what could be improved." 

Anne contrasts this commitment to customer success with other technology providers: "New companies come out and they're great for a while and then they get busy and then they don't call you back anymore. That has not happened to Topkey. [We] always get a call back or a response. Always get a smiling face." 

This responsive partnership has been crucial for a growing company like Scenic Stays, which has specific needs that evolve as they scale.

Looking Ahead: Supporting Sustainable Growth

Scenic Stays continues to focus on expanding within their existing geographic market, increasing their property portfolio while maintaining quality service. The financial foundation they've built with Topkey will play an important role in supporting this growth:

"We like our geographical area. We love being here on the Gulf, on the water. So, we are looking to grow our number of units here in our home area."

As they expand, Topkey's scalable platform will help Scenic Stays maintain financial control while accommodating additional properties and team members.

Advice for Other Property Manager CFOs

When asked what she would tell other CFOs considering Topkey, Anne's recommendation is unequivocal:

"I'd tell them to absolutely do it, to sign up and use it and it's going to help you so much, keeping your expenses straight and helping you in real-time with your financials."

Conclusion: A Foundation for Financial Excellence

For Scenic Stays, Topkey has transformed financial operations from a source of frustration and revenue leakage to a streamlined, real-time system that provides immediate visibility and control.

The ability to capture expenses in real time, accelerate financial reporting, and ensure complete owner billing has created tangible business value. Perhaps more importantly, it has given managers throughout the organization the financial visibility they need to make informed decisions promptly.

The results speak for themselves: faster financial reporting, enhanced expense control, and recovered revenue from properly billed owner expenses. For a rapidly growing company like Scenic Stays, these improvements provide a strong financial foundation for continued expansion.

Ready to transform your vacation rental company's financial operations? Schedule a demo with Topkey today.

*Topkey is a financial technology company and is not a bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank; Member FDIC.

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